


With a Thought

by SocialMoth



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012), The Tempest - Shakespeare
Genre: Angst, Gen, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Imaginary Friends, Mild Hurt/Comfort, my feelings are done, this crossover shouldn't work, why does it work?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 00:12:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SocialMoth/pseuds/SocialMoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I come to answer thy best pleasure, be 't to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, to ride on the curled clouds." (Act 1, Scene 2)</p><p>--</p><p>Jack made an imaginary friend.</p><p>Little did he know that someone was actually there.</p><p>--</p><p>This work is my intellectual property. I do not give you or anyone else permission to offer my works for download.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With a Thought

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Invisible Boy's Invisible Friend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/899577) by [The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting/pseuds/The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting). 



> August 2013
> 
> So I saw "The Tempest" at the Globe in May. And in that production, (spoiler) after Prospero broke his staff, he couldn't see Ariel anymore.
> 
> And then I read ["The Invisible Boy's Invisible Friend"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/899577) (I do recommend reading that for complete understanding of this) and plot bunnies ensued and you know what, it just _worked._
> 
> ...My feelings are now completely done.
> 
> *I don't think you have to be familiar with "The Tempest" to understand this; but basically, Ariel is an "airy spirit" who was under a magician's control for many years after this magician rescued him from a pine tree (long story -- and he later gets threatened with an oak); at one point in the play Ariel asks about love and mentions that he might feel compassion as humans do. He craves freedom and is finally released at the end of the play. Then Ariel was left alone.
> 
> And now here he is.
> 
> \--
> 
> This work is my intellectual property. I do not give you or anyone else permission to offer my works for download.

He liked the way the boy danced. Lithe and light in the sky, the youth with the white hair spun as he pleased, smiling gaily at the light of the stars. And wherever the boy went, Ariel followed. In the quickness of his step, the spirit felt a familiar ache in his being, a need to remain with him. Maybe one day the boy's magic could grow, and with a wave of the hooked staff he carried, Ariel would be seen again...  
  
The boy often sat in the thick tree limbs above his lake, hugging that staff against his lean chest. Sometimes the boy cried sorrowfully, and Ariel would brush a puff of a breeze through the coarse white tufts of hair, anything to ease his pain.  
  
Long ago, Ariel had been ruined by another man who carried a staff and wielded magic, though his staff was less crude and his magic more potent. With that man, Ariel had watched human suffering. And, more terribly, he had learned love.  
  
And maybe it was love for this boy – so undeniably _human_ despite his sojourns on the wind – that kept Ariel close. The compassion he had learned to feel, persuading him that the boy was too lonely to be left alone. Ariel could not be certain. But the satisfaction he found boosting the boy's steps a little higher than he'd expected, and receiving a gleeful laugh for his efforts, outweighed all reservations. He enjoyed this boy with command over frost and snow, and by his side he continued to stay.  
  
He only wished that his dear boy could see him.  
  
\--  
  
It's many decades before the boy speaks to him. Ariel is stricken and tries to reply, but the boy looks past him and over him, and Ariel realizes it's the snowmen they've built. It's futile, useless, Ariel wants to cry; they can't hear you! But his boy keeps touching them, rebuilding them when their bodies become misshapen in the sun. And always talking to them, telling him about his day and this snowball fight and that sledding accident. Ariel is the only one who can listen, but he cannot reply. He brushes fingers through the boy's hair again and picks at his cloak, but it does not make do for words.  
  
The boy forgets about the snowmen. Ariel watches the thoughts swirl behind icy blue eyes and follows him into flight. Casting around himself and trying to settle on a spot, the boy directs a question to empty air. His voice is awkward and he looks ready to blush violet into his chest like he wants to take it back. There is no one else around and Ariel realizes the question is for _him_ and he pipes a breeze across the boy's nose. The boy laughs, impossibly, and he says something that can't follow, but it feels enough like a conversation that the spirit doesn't mind. Instead of bringing them back to his lake, the boy takes Ariel over rooftops and along the river, spreading ice and snow and joking the whole way. Ice slates across the cobbled roads and the boy skates laughingly over it, encouraging Ariel to try it, and keep up. Ariel responds to everything even though their words never mesh. The boy never looks at Ariel, certainly can't hear him. A feeling like elation surges through Ariel anyway, and he thinks he might laugh, too, if he understood how. But he understands the joy: centuries in solitude, and now he knows this youth feels just as alone as he ever did; and somehow that makes the loneliness hurt less.  
  
In the nights following, his boy continues to talk to the empty air, except it's not empty. Ariel is there and he is always answering, and after a time he swears his boy has learned how to hear him. The light dancing in wide blue eyes and the grin that splits his face suck him in and though Ariel has no master, he feels like he is under a spell. Sometimes Ariel feels like the boy's conversation gave him form, and he can sit out on the branch and face the boy and they can talk like he is actually there. He learns to laugh by mimicking, and when he finally does it on his own he reaches out to cuff the boy for his joke like he's watched so many human children do. And the warmth spilling onto the boy's face makes him think he really is the boy's friend.  
  
–  
  
The centuries continue to slip by. Jack Frost changes his clothing but he never changes his magic. Ariel is every bit as invisible to him as the day he first found the boy asleep in a tall fir tree. Yet the magic is stronger and the boy can hear him, and to the boy Ariel is real. No one has locked him into physical form for centuries; Ariel hopes that no one ever will again, but an ache constricts him like an oak tree that this boy he's watched over might never gaze upon him and see. Freedom calls him but compassion turns him back again. This boy _needs_ him. He feels his heart quake when children run through him, when nights stretch too long and cold and lonely. Ariel remains because he's ruined, broken with love. And Jack Frost has no one else but him.  
  
–  
  
One day, everything changes. Jack cannot talk to him freely, because they can't be caught by his new, _real_ friends. Sometimes they steal a moment alone, and when someone walks in Jack manages to cover them both. Ariel knows it cannot last. And it doesn't. Exposed, Jack cannot bring himself to speak to Ariel again. It hurts, actually _hurts,_ to hear Jack say he no longer needs his invisible friend. But despite himself and all the reasons he ever gave to stay, an ancient desire wells up in Ariel's heart, one that he has ignored for three hundred years.  
  
_Liberty..._  
  
Jack Frost knows it is time to let go. And Ariel follows them to the lake where he first found the boy, for the mock funeral. It's supposed to bring them closure. Jack is silent, but his heart is _screaming._ Maybe Ariel's should be, too. He thinks of his imprisonment in the pine tree, and he feels like _he_ should be the one screaming.  
  
Jack flies far ahead of the others when they leave his lake, and Ariel knows he is really free now – in fact he was never beholden to the boy in the first place. But it hurts, like it did so many centuries ago when another man broke the bond between them. And Ariel did not get to say farewell then, but today he has a chance. He has had so long to grow so fond of this master-friend.  
  
With a thought he caresses tears away from his dear boy's stricken face, and watches the tension fall away like flurried snow.  
  
"Goodbye, Jack Frost."  
  
And they never speak again.

**Author's Note:**

> (And there he went.)


End file.
